It takes a lot to get Al Gore frustrated; even when he "lost" (through a hastily halted Florida recount) the 2000 Presidential Election to George W. Bush, he rarely appeared phased, or even over-animated - in public at least.

But the future of the planet is simply more important than winning or losing and the surprise follow-up to the 2006 Oscar winning 'An Inconvenient Truth' features a really pissed off Al Gore. The "next former President of The United States" started a group called 'The Climate Reality Project,' with the idea of battling the misinformation of climate change deniers and mobilising people all over the world to fight global warming. Hearteningly, this is where we realise, this isn't a speaking tour, this is a movement.

Just like the first film, it involves Gore in front of an audience explaining what's going on with our climate (spoiler alert, we're f**ked and need to take the finger out), with directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk deftly editing moments of Gore's many meetings and events with powerful world leaders. One moment with then Secretary of State John Kerry, pointing out how crucial India are in the grand scheme of things, proves pivotal. We see glimpses of Gore's ability to negotiate with those who initially seem closed off to his ideas, and it's incredibly impressive.

Like the first film, you can't help but wonder 'what if?' There's been so much talk about legacy and Presidents and the press being on the right or wrong side of history, can you imagine and world where someone this forward thinking made the changes that needed to be made 17 years ago?

The producers had to re-edit when Donald Trump pulled out of The Paris Climate Agreement. Gore's worry being that it could cause a ripple effect with other world leaders, who thankfully saw more sense.

This is an extremely important watch for young and old. This isn't a political issue nor should it be, this is about a future that is quickly running out of time.

For what it's worth, those history books will be extremely kind to Al Gore

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Comments

Al G is pretty clearly the moneyed dynastic US politician, but beyond that he's clearly committed on the climate topic. The film is excellent - hard not to be moved by it.
It's a critically important issue, so it was disappointing to see only two people at a recent showing. It pretty much sums up our attitude on the issue.
There's enormously powerful vested interests choosing to utilise the reality that warming produces more variable and more extreme weather to rubbish the whole suggestion that we're facing serious climate problems.
The consequently conflicting views and the fact that it's so hard to get solid information means that most of us end up deciding to ignore the issue
The central point is very simple. While there's a definite possibility that warming is mostly non-man made, the fact is that we cannot indiscriminately either add to it, or keep on pumping crap into our environment.
We need rational policies however that get resources behind key projects that eg will deliver clean energy sources - not taxes on emissions and other measures that play into the hands of the bureaucracies, clobber the less well off and are politically unsustainable....

Posted 19:40 | Tue 22nd Aug 2017

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